EPISODE 173: The Desecrators with Matt & Mercy Schlapp

Episode 173:  The Desecrators with Matt and Mercy Schlapp

Speaker 1 (00:04):

Welcome to The Bill Walton Show, featuring conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and thinkers. Fresh perspectives on money, culture, politics, and human flourishing. Interesting people, interesting things.

Bill Walton (00:25):

Welcome to The Bill Walton Show. I’m Bill Walton. I’m back today with my great friend and leader in the American movement, Matt Schlapp. Matt Schlapp is chairman and CEO of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors CPAC, which is coming up, I think next week.

Matt Schlapp (00:43):

That’s right.

Bill Walton (00:44):

We’re here to talk about Matt’s powerful new book, The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and Reclaiming One Nation Under God. It’s a book flat out about patriotism and faith and their enemies. And Matt put it pretty well as he writes in his introduction, “The country we pledge allegiance to and the truths to which we adhere are being attacked by evil forces that hate both America and the church. Our country was formed in the crucible of a Christian culture and no nation on earth should be better complement to these many moral teaching that shaped the Western world. Yet today, the so-called Progressive Left wants to bring all that to an end.” Matt, well spoken, well said. The title, The Desecrators, how’d you come up with that?

Matt Schlapp (01:41):

Well, I give a lot of credit to this book, to my co-author, Deal Hudson, who is somebody who as a former academic and someone who got involved in politics to help George W. Bush and others and help Donald Trump substantially, he called me one day and he said, “This cancel culture thing,” because he had approached me on writing the book with the publisher, and he was like, “You’ve been canceled. You understand cancel culture. You got to tell your story.” I was like, “I don’t have time to tell my story.” He was like, “Well, I’ll help you tell your story.” That’s how we got the book. And then he called one day as we were writing these chapters and he was like, “This is more diabolical than just cancel culture.”

“Cancel culture is, you have a political view, it’s outside the mainstream, or I think it’s outside of the mainstream, I have power, I’m going to silence you.” He said, “This is much deeper than that.” And what we came to realize as we were writing is that everything that’s good, that’s true, that’s holy, that’s inspirational, that brings human joy, it’s under attack right now in a coordinated fashion. How could that be that everything that is transcendent and good and decent about life is on the ropes because of what the Left is doing?

Bill Walton (02:48):

Desecrators means what?

Matt Schlapp (02:50):

To me that’s more of a spiritual definition. It’s the idea of, not I have an opinion, you have an opinion, but it’s about, think of what someone does to a holy site. You try to desecrate it because you know how powerful it is in people’s lives and you want to remove its sacredness.

Bill Walton (03:08):

Well, you and I have talked about this a lot, this is the conversation we’ve had over dinners over the past couple of years. It’s not clear that the so-called Progressive Left knows what it wants to progress to. In fact, there’s a great term, I think the Russians first came up with it, called nihilist. And they’re not people that want to build anything, they just want to tear everything down and destroy it. And if you look through the agenda of the people we are up against, Occupy Wall Street was the first iteration and now we’ve got Black Lives Matter, and I’m sure there’ll be another iteration after Black Lives Matter.

If you look at what their objectives are, it’s to end marriage, end the family, end capitalism, end the Western way of life and the church and Christianity. But nowhere do you really find that page that tells you what they want, what they want to build, what they’re pushing towards. And so to me, this thing has to bankrupt itself because there’s no Valhalla  out there they’re aiming for, they just want to destroy all the things that you called desecration.

Matt Schlapp (04:13):

That’s exactly right. And I love what Sarah Carter said when I was on her podcast, she kept calling it the defecators. And I was like, that is a synonym to what they’re basically doing. It was funny, they are really trying to-

Bill Walton (04:32):

She’s more red meat than I

Matt Schlapp (04:33):

She is. She is. She speaks like a real person.

Bill Walton (04:36):

So do I.

Matt Schlapp (04:36):

If you think about this, Bill, you and I talked about this several times, which is one of the reasons why people who are conservative, which we’re going to get into why that term might not be as operable, but for the sake of polling, it is operable because that’s what we have called ourselves for a couple of decades, since Reagan, since Buckley, we’re the conservatives, we’re the traditionalists and we’re the people attached to our history. And if you look at the polling, we are the biggest subset in America enduring over time. Sometimes some years it registers a few points higher, some years it registers a few points lower. The smallest subsection of America are the socialists.

Now, how is it that all the conservatives act like we’re the smallest and the nichiest, and we have the fewest numbers and the socialists act like they have the most numbers? We have to start actually using the power that we already have.

Bill Walton (05:34):

Speaking about numbers, I’m going to have to double your number.

Matt Schlapp (05:38):

Okay. Good.

Bill Walton (05:39):

Mercedes Schlapp just walked in. You know Mercedes?

Matt Schlapp (05:42):

I do know her.

Bill Walton (05:43):

The other half and the brains of the group. Mercedes, why don’t you come on and then join us. Mercedes was off, I think, helping her kids with midterms.

Matt Schlapp (05:54):

For sure. The midterms has become a family project, I want you to know.

Bill Walton (05:59):

Miraculously, Mercy Schlapp has appeared. Mercy, great to see you.

Mercy Schlapp (06:05):

I need you to move closer, Bill. You and Sarah.

Bill Walton (06:09):

Okay. I think you two know each other.

Mercy Schlapp (06:11):

Hi. I haven’t seen you, honey. It’s been a long time.

Bill Walton (06:14):

Mercy’s been helping out with midterm exams, and so she got in here. How’d we do?

Mercy Schlapp (06:20):

Well, we’ll see how they do. They’ve been hanging in there, it’s a stressful time for these teenagers for so many reasons. Bill, just even the fact that they’ve survived this COVID mania is insane because you’ve seen the mayor of DC, they go to school in DC.

Bill Walton (06:36):

You’ve got five girls.

Mercy Schlapp (06:37):

Five girls.

Bill Walton (06:37):

One’s in Notre Dame now.

Mercy Schlapp (06:38):

One’s off to college and two go to school in all girls Catholic school in DC. And when you’re talking about mask mandates and vaccine mandates and just the psychological impact that it’s having on all these kids, let me tell you, they’re going to have long lasting, I think, negative effects on them. And so part of this is really trying to make sure that you provide that support to them, even pray with them before, even just midterm exams, because things have been so chaotic in their lives for the past few years.

Bill Walton (07:10):

For a woman who needs no introduction, let me give you a brief one. She’s the co-host of America UnCanceled. The other host is sitting right here with us, and you were a very big deal in the Trump White House and the Trump campaign.

Mercy Schlapp (07:22):

And now I’m a big deal as a midterm exam like tutor. That’s what I feel like. Schlapp had to take over this morning because I think I was more stressed out than the girls and I was like, “Matt, you just got to manage them. I can’t like, it’s your job.”

Matt Schlapp (07:36):

Do you know what I taught them, Bill? My first rule. We all have rules. My first rule in life is don’t panic. And what I’ve noticed is that actually is a rule we all need to rediscover because for 18 months, everyone panicked constantly and hyperventilated. And I don’t know many situations, maybe if you have to get your endorphins up or kick in the chemicals besides your brain, I don’t know how that ever helps.

Bill Walton (08:01):

I still agree. We keep a sign over here in the other part of the studio, maybe Kenny could find it.

Mercy Schlapp (08:07):

Oh, keep calm. I saw it.

Bill Walton (08:12):

It was in the shelter in London where Winston Churchill conducted the war effort. And this is one of my favorites and it’s pretty close to yours, keep calm and carry on.

Matt Schlapp (08:21):

That’s right.

Mercy Schlapp (08:22):

I got to text that to the girls before they take their exam, let me tell you. And when you’re married to a Cuban, Bill, and you spent enough, you and Sarah.

Bill Walton (08:22):

Well, you’re the Cuban.

Mercy Schlapp (08:29):

Yeah. You and Sarah spend a lot of time with both of us and with our children. I feel like I’m always panicking. So I don’t really know. We’re just more emotional.

Matt Schlapp (08:39):

I would just say you’re very high energy, you’re not Jeb Bush. It’s a high energy, that’s okay.

Bill Walton (08:44):

Well, I remember you tell the story in your book about meeting Trump and how you were there with Dan Schneider and with another board member to pitch Trump on supporting Job ACU, and the other board member who was unnamed in the book didn’t want pitch the ACU idea. He wanted to pitch Jeb Bush as a candidate. And what did Donald Trump say about Jed Bush?

Matt Schlapp (09:05):

He’s a loser

Mercy Schlapp (09:05):

That hasn’t changed much.

Bill Walton (09:10):

Yeah. That was your first meeting with him.

Matt Schlapp (09:11):

That was actually Mr. Ana Navarro-Cárdenas who was the chairman before me, who has now gone on to marry one of the co-hosts of The View and become quite liberal in his politics.

Mercy Schlapp (09:22):

Yeah. Sadly.

Matt Schlapp (09:25):

That was a meeting for the ages. And of course, the best parts of those meetings I can’t really say because I do have some comport and dignity about myself and I do consider Donald Trump a friend as well as a great president. And he says great things, some of them should not end up in books.

Mercy Schlapp (09:43):

Bill, I don’t know if you all talked about this, but obviously with this-

Bill Walton (09:46):

No. We’re just getting started.

Mercy Schlapp (09:47):

Oh, we are. Okay. With the allegations that you have the Clinton campaign spying on the Trump campaign, who knew what did Hillary Clinton know, which I predict she knew exactly what was going on. And what they did to try to not only cancel President Trump, then candidate Trump, but to create these false narratives about him, it just shows you how corrupt the political system has become and what the Democrats will do. They will do anything they can to not only destroy the other side, but also just to break it all down, even if it’s illegal acts. And that to us, I think has really, I think in this past week that we’ve been talking about it, it just shows their hatred for Donald Trump was to do everything they can to stop him, destroy him, discredit him. And now I think it’s all backfiring.

Matt Schlapp (10:41):

Can I amplify that a little bit, Bill? I know they hate Donald Trump for all kinds of reasons, but I think what the book gets into is that Trump is part of it. They had a lot of people, they’re trying to cancel and destroy a lot of people. And we use this term desecration because I think at the end of it, the reason why they hated Trump the most is because he got the joke, he knew what they were all about. He knew exactly what they were trying to do. He knew how sinister it was. I don’t know if he’s a particularly religious guy, but he got the fact that they’re going to crush everybody that gets in their way. And he’d watched them crush so many people and he was experiencing it with himself and his family.

And so to me, the reason why Trump is such an enemy to these people is not because of Twitter, it’s not because of an affair or a divorce or bankruptcy, there’s nothing to do with it. The reason is they have nothing on him. They made up things that they thought they could leverage him over. They got no ability. They can’t cancel his financial security, they can’t cancel this career that he’s had or his fame. They couldn’t stop him. And the only way in the end they could stop him is, this incredible tale of Russian collusion, two impeachments, and then an election with fraudulent voting.

Mercy Schlapp (12:00):

And handing everything to the FBI and then the FBI running with it. That’s such a disgusting part of this complicated network that we’re seeing.

Bill Walton (12:08):

What we learned about infiltration of our institution is really, really  a problem. This is Bill Walton Show, I’m here with Matt and Mercy Schlapp, and ostensibly, we’re here to talk about Matt’s book, The Desecrator, although I suspect we’re going to talk about everything under the sun.

Matt Schlapp (12:24):

I hope so.

Bill Walton (12:25):

Let me ask you guys a question, I’ve got a colleague from my old world of being CEO of a publicly traded financial. He runs another one, he’s on the left. And he sent me a note after one of the shows and he said, “A lot of your guests are for Trump and you did a show on ethics. And how can you do a show on ethics if you’re for Donald Trump?” And I haven’t gotten back to him yet because it’s just a delicious setup for me. How would you answer that question? Because I would first start thinking about Joe Biden’s ethics and maybe the $35 million he’s gotten from various foreign countries.

Matt Schlapp (13:06):

I’d like to paraphrase Jesus Christ to George W. Bush-

Mercy Schlapp (13:10):

Let’s just start there.

Matt Schlapp (13:11):

… one said it was his favorite [inaudible 00:13:12].

Bill Walton (13:13):

That’s the ultimate appeal to authority.

Matt Schlapp (13:15):

Beware the man who is fasting and wears a gaunt look on his face, beware the man that is involved in deprivations and walks around with grubby clothes and a bad look on his face. Those people that are portraying piety and holiness and ethics are oftentimes the biggest frauds. This is the oldest story of the human story and the Bible and Jesus captures it perfectly. Sometimes the holiest person-

Bill Walton (13:49):

Do you remember which book? I want to quote-

Matt Schlapp (13:52):

It’s all over the New Testament-

Mercy Schlapp (13:55):

You’ll find the reading. This the problem with the Catholic, we never know like exactly what reading is this-

Bill Walton (13:57):

Oh yeah, you never get to read the actual book.

Mercy Schlapp (13:58):

So we’ve got to go back. We’re really good with saints and like the Virgin Mary, but when it comes-

Matt Schlapp (14:02):

Well, I think a pretty good quote is, beware the Pharisees. These were the supposedly the rigorous religious men who were the examples. And Jesus’ point was, he’d rather hang out with Mary Magdalene who had basically been a prostitute, than hang out with these phony people who were supposedly so ethical. So I think in life, I’ve come to the point where I’m really skeptical as to who these paragons of virtue are. And what we put up as the paragon of virtue in Republican politics is, do they have good hair and a red tie, one marriage? Okay, maybe Ronald Reagan had two. Do they have these beautiful kids who are perfect and look perfect in the photo?

Bill Walton (14:48):

Oh ,y God, you’re describing Mitt Romney.

Matt Schlapp (14:50):

Exactly.

Bill Walton (14:51):

Stop.

Matt Schlapp (14:52):

Exactly.

Bill Walton (14:52):

Stop.

Matt Schlapp (14:53):

He has all the outside appearances of morality yet he is aiding and abetting.

Bill Walton (14:59):

He marches with Black Lives Matter.

Matt Schlapp (15:00):

Exactly. He marched for abortion for nine months, and that is unforgivable to me.

Bill Walton (15:08):

He was pro-abortion, just to be clear.

Matt Schlapp (15:10):

He was.

Mercy Schlapp (15:10):

Well, and Biden’s pro-abortion and Kamala’s pro-abortion, and they’re extreme in their policies. We always talked about this, we always said, Trump is not… he’s not a churched person. He has a lot of flaws, but did he do the right things? Did he implement the right to help America and to help Americans prosper? We weren’t looking to elect a priest or the Pope or someone like that, we needed a doer who can come in and basically break the China in Washington. And that’s actually interesting-

Matt Schlapp (15:48):

Good. He broke two Chinas.

Mercy Schlapp (15:50):

It’s not only the china plates, but China.

Matt Schlapp (15:55):

He broke the actor who was beginning to… That’s where they got rid of him.

Mercy Schlapp (15:55):

We both have spent a lot of time with the president. Of course, do you wish he would tweet less or not be so just trying to attack someone personally? Yes. I would like that. I advised him plenty of times not to do that, but I also recognized that he was willing to take on the fight, he was doing what he could to be the voice of those that needed help, the forgotten men and women. And he did a fabulous job for our country. You look at Biden, Biden could be the most ethical person, but he is destroying America in the process.

Bill Walton (16:34):

But we’re not saying that.

Mercy Schlapp (16:34):

Right. So this goes back to your friend, Hillary Clinton, what’s ethical about spying on the Trump campaign and making these false accusations? So I think going back to your friend, it’s figuring this out of, these candidates are not perfect or these presidents are not perfect, but what are they doing?

Bill Walton (16:53):

Well, we don’t have a perfect president anywhere, anytime ever.

Matt Schlapp (16:57):

Never have had.

Bill Walton (16:57):

Never have. But I come from the the MBA world, finance, CEO world. There’s a tremendous book called the Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. Do you ever read it or hear about it?

Matt Schlapp (17:09):

I’ve read a lot of Drucker.

Bill Walton (17:10):

Well, his point was that you measure people of their effectiveness, by what they bring about. You’re measured by results. I’ve interviewed 53,000 CEOs, I exaggerate, but he knew everybody. And he says, they’re fat, they’re tall, they’re sober, they’re drunk, they’re white, they’re black, whatever. And they all have something that’s effective that doesn’t depend on who they are, they just know how to make things happen. And that’s why I think Trump is one of our best presidents ever. Because if you look at what he accomplished in four years, it’s staggering. I’m telling you that.

Matt Schlapp (17:48):

It I staggering.

Mercy Schlapp (17:49):

He did run the White House, and I would say the administration-

Bill Walton (17:53):

I don’t think I would’ve wanted to work for him. You guys did. I think he would have been very tough.

Mercy Schlapp (17:55):

Oh. You would’ve loved working for him.

Bill Walton (17:56):

Would it be fun?

Mercy Schlapp (17:57):

Oh, Bill, you would’ve loved every moment, every challenge, every debate.

Matt Schlapp (18:00):

He wouldn’t have liked working for some of those nitwits he put in his senior positions, you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed that.

Mercy Schlapp (18:05):

No, you would’ve loved it. Because with Trump, with everything good and bad, he loved his job, and he had fun in the most challenging of times. And he was able to just deal with every crisis that would come his way. You would’ve loved working with him. But I think we’re facing the challenge of where we are now as a country, where we’re headed. And it is just simply unethical to move this country towards a socialist country that literally destroys the spirit of every American. And that to me is the biggest argument you can make. That is unethical, taking away someone to freedom, canceling them because they have an opinion or a dissenting opinion like they’ve done to these doctors who simply question simple things, whether it be the vaccine or the mask mandate, and they get shut down.

Matt Schlapp (19:03):

Fired.

Mercy Schlapp (19:03):

That is unethical. This is America where we’re big enough to have diverse opinions and challenge each other and talk about your view versus that other person’s view. And that is what I think is what we’re losing in this country right now.

Bill Walton (19:17):

Well, this may be one of the places to bring up what I admire about the two of you so much, is you’ve gone through personal hell in the last year  after Biden came in.

Mercy Schlapp (19:28):

Two years.

Matt Schlapp (19:28):

Feels like a lot longer than a year.

Mercy Schlapp (19:30):

It’s two years.

Matt Schlapp (19:31):

But yeah, you’re right-

Mercy Schlapp (19:32):

Don’t worry, Matt here’s been white for a long time, but yeah, it’s been about two years of pain. And you all have experienced it with us. You all have been there when we’ve hit the tough times.

Matt Schlapp (19:42):

We hit the skids.

Bill Walton (19:43):

Well, The Unit, they’ve got an enemy’s list of the people who worked for Trump, they’re not supposed to hire people that work for Trump. You’re on that list, and that’s still something that is out there.

Mercy Schlapp (19:51):

I’m on the Antifa execution list. That’s always interesting too. That’s the stuff they do. They send death threats, and this is what we deal with.

Bill Walton (20:01):

And you’ve had people in your neighborhood come up to you and your kids and tell you you’re terrible people. I don’t know what else they’ve said, but it’s been a very, very-

Matt Schlapp (20:07):

It’s kind of a weekly thing, it’s a weekly existence in the swamp.

Bill Walton (20:10):

And then you had a consulting business basically advising big companies on how to deal with the Trump world.

Mercy Schlapp (20:18):

And Republicans.

Bill Walton (20:19):

And Republicans. They need help like that, but they won’t touch you now.

Matt Schlapp (20:24):

No, they hired a blogger. I have my own opinions on who hired and paid for the blogger, but the blogger went to each one of these fortune 100 entities, companies, and basically said, “You have a racist who you employ and you either fire him or were going to call you every day and call you out publicly.” And so a lot of these people who had hired me were my friends and they would say, “Don’t worry, we know you’re not a racist.”

Mercy Schlapp (20:47):

Stick by you.

Matt Schlapp (20:48):

And then by Tuesday, I was getting pink slips left and right. By the way, I just took one. And I think the first one might have been Abbott Labs, the one that produce all these tests that are so phony that we have to take constantly, they have 50% error rates and everything else. But Abbott had this real hard charging CEO, might still have him in a general council. They were called by Black Lives Matter. And they have this whole statement-

Mercy Schlapp (21:10):

And by the blogger.

Matt Schlapp (21:11):

They have this whole statement about how they stand for Black Lives Matter and they don’t have anything to do with me. So essentially, in that case, you’re called a racist. And then I portray in the book other people who called me and said, “We’re letting you go because we believe in racial equality.” I try not to use names because this isn’t a gossipy book, but why did I write that all out? Well, because I needed to do it for my own spiritual purposes, but I also did it because I just wanted everyone to know out there that this is happening on every block in America, whether you’re a mailman or a CEO or an NBA player like Enis Freedom-

Mercy Schlapp (21:47):

Or that woman in Levi’s company where they were trying to pay her off to shut up.

Matt Schlapp (21:54):

Or the coach who says, “No, I’m not going to teach the kids that they’re in the wrong gender or whatever.” All of this has been going on, this kind of insanity. And I just wanted them to understand that If I can say it and have the consequences for saying what I said, they could do it too.

Bill Walton (22:13):

Well, I want to just make sure that it’s on record, which is why we’re talking about this right now, the price you guys have paid. And instead of knuckling under, you doubled down and you re doubled your efforts. So instead of running off and saying, “Gee, I didn’t mean any of that,” you write a book like this.

Matt Schlapp (22:29):

Which is stupid. If I was smarter, I would’ve said, when that first person called-

Mercy Schlapp (22:36):

He’s very honest, Bill, you’ve got to give him that.

Bill Walton (22:39):

I know that.

Matt Schlapp (22:40):

When the first person you called and they said, “All you have to do is apologize for what you said.” And I don’t put all the tweets in the book, but if I were to go through all the tweets, if I had the capability to go find them, which I really don’t have-

Bill Walton (22:50):

The tweet saying to you-

Matt Schlapp (22:51):

No, the tweets that I sent on Black Lives Matter. It wasn’t even on television,

Mercy Schlapp (22:55):

Which was literally getting from the Black Lives Matter website, how they don’t believe in nuclear family, how they believe in defunding the police, how they believe in pretty much late term abortion. And bringing that up highlighting that-

Bill Walton (22:55):

And it was all on their website-

Matt Schlapp (22:55):

All on their website.

Mercy Schlapp (23:10):

… and then all of a sudden, Schlapp is a racist.

Bill Walton (23:10):

Yeah, I looked at the website.

Mercy Schlapp (23:12):

And then one company decided because Schlapp made a critical comment basically saying Christopher Columbus shouldn’t be canceled, and they’re like, “Well, Christopher Columbus is a bad guy, and so we have to fire you.” The best was that one guy who fires you and then says, “Can we still be friends?” And Matt Schlapp was like, “Absolutely not.”

Matt Schlapp (23:32):

That is not what I said.

Mercy Schlapp (23:33):

Well, what did you say?

Matt Schlapp (23:34):

It was a lot more colorful. And I was very clear that you wouldn’t want to be-

Bill Walton (23:39):

Well, this is only going to be in CPAC now streaming, so you’re among friends.

Matt Schlapp (23:42):

Bill, we get more views than CNN. So get with it.

Bill Walton (23:45):

I know. I am a part of that. It’s great.

Matt Schlapp (23:49):

The point is this, and I bring this up in the book, which was the very fact that after he fired me for being a racist, that he then texted me to resume the friendship. That was proof of the fact that he knows I’m not a racist. He was simply following the bidding of his higher ups who didn’t wanted to be rid of this meddlesome priest, to quote a historical allusion. I was a problem for them, I was creating disharmony within their corporate structure, but my point back to several of them who would listen was, “Hey, look, I get it. I’m just a consultant. Consultants come and go. Fine. You get rid of me.”

I was like, “But how are you ever going to give a PAC check to a Republican again? Because eventually, everyone’s going to figure out what this whole Black Lives Matter thing is”-

Mercy Schlapp (24:36):

Which they have.

Matt Schlapp (24:37):

And we’re going to have a lot of dead people on the streets when these cities defund their cops, which is exactly what happened. And now we realize the extremism of it. And now, what did they do next, Bill?

Bill Walton (24:47):

Well, I want to circle back into this with your saying with the book and The Desecrators and the nihilist and, what’s a word that Sarah Carter used?

Mercy Schlapp (24:50):

He’s going to change the name of your book, Sweetie, to be The Nihilist.

Bill Walton (24:56):

This is The Bill Walton Show. I’m here with Matt and Mercy Schlapp. We’re ostensibly talking about his book, which everybody should buy, The Desecrators, because it tells the truth about what’s going on. But eventually, these people, they’re going to run out of bullets because they’ve got racism, racism, racism. My favorite word’s nihilist, you like desecrator. But basically, this is a term for people who want to destroy, destroy, destroy, and they don’t have any plan for what they want to build.

And even though we’re hearing these words progressive, I don’t see what kind of world they want to build, it doesn’t exist. And so destroy, destroy, destroy. Eventually, people are going to say, “Wait a second, who’s that little guy behind the curtain?” You get powerful laws of racism. At some point, I think even people are going to start pushing back against this racism term.

Matt Schlapp (25:50):

Well, this was the point, which is, “Okay, so they can cancel me.” But then the next step will be, you won’t be able to write a PAC check to Ted Cruz or Mike Lee or Jim Jordan, or more moderate Republicans who are going to be… So what was the next thing that happened? We had this terrible election, this election with all this fraudulent voting, which we saw firsthand. What did they do to the 147 Republicans in the house and the Senate who were simply doing one thing, they were standing up for the legal use of voter ID to vote. That’s all that was. They can say, trying to break an election and everything else, it wasn’t.

It was the fact that nobody the right to discard voter ID laws. So then they said they wouldn’t give those 147 Republicans PAC checks, and its hundreds of companies that said they wouldn’t do that. So literally, they defunded the cops and then they defunded any Republican who stood against Black Lives Matter and getting rid of voter ID because that was of course racist because everything is racist now. And so now you have the situation where the American people who outnumber this woke crazy mob have clearly said, even in the state of Virginia, “We have had it with all this.”

Bill Walton (27:00):

What do you think the numbers are? What percentage of Americans do you think are with us on all this?

Matt Schlapp (27:06):

I’d say the percentage of Americans who are done with wokeness is in the middle 60s.

Mercy Schlapp (27:12):

That’s interesting.

Matt Schlapp (27:12):

They’re not Republican only.

Bill Walton (27:13):

Because you’re out talking with people all over the country all the time.

Mercy Schlapp (27:17):

You are really starting to see the trend shift where independents are waking up to the reality of what the Democrats are trying to accomplish. We just saw this in California, it was announced a little bit ago, where three of the progressive school board members have been ousted.

Matt Schlapp (27:33):

Can I just interrupt you?

Mercy Schlapp (27:34):

Yes.

Matt Schlapp (27:34):

And the person who funded that called us yesterday at CPAC, he wants to come. This is what’s happening all over the country, which I don’t know how Republican all these people are, but we have this common thing, which is parents matter.

Mercy Schlapp (27:46):

And Matt mentioned that we want to move even beyond conservative to just simply being America. It’s the America movement. We need to protect this country because we’re the last man, I’m using gender, we’re the last man standing.

Bill Walton (28:01):

It’s okay. You can use gender.

Mercy Schlapp (28:02):

If we fall apart, Bill, the world falls apart. What takes over? Who takes over in that vacuum? China and Russia. And they’ve made it very clear as when Putin met with President Xi during the Olympics to say, “We have formed an alliance,” and criticized the United States relentlessly. So that is where we are at this point. Are we going to be able to survive as a nation, be strong enough to be able to defend ourselves against the growing powers of Russia and China? That’s what we have to realize.

Bill Walton (28:38):

Well, when I was writing this introduction, I came up with the standard thing, conservative movement. That’s not what we are.

Mercy Schlapp (28:44):

We’re so beyond that, it’s so expanding.

Bill Walton (28:46):

My term is the American cause. Because you’re right, we stand for something. We’re an exceptional country. Not because we’ve got lots of wealth, we’re exceptional because we’re based on ideas and we’re based on the constitution, and we’re based in faith. That’s unusual if not unique.

Matt Schlapp (29:06):

I say we are Americans who love America’s founding, because that’s what’s under attack. This whole idea that the founding of America was a dark mark on the history of humankind.

Bill Walton (29:18):

You guys get out and about, you’ve gotten into debates with anybody on 1619? Have you had a chance to take that one on?

Matt Schlapp (29:24):

Well, I haven’t been invited on CNN recently, so-

Mercy Schlapp (29:24):

No, we just run into people that are supportive.

Bill Walton (29:24):

Hey, you guys get to do this show. I’m sorry, what’d you say, Mercy?

Mercy Schlapp (29:27):

We’ve just been around a lot of people that have been very supportive and actually get very emotional at times, Bill. We’ve had people cry with us where they’re like, “We are losing this country. What does this mean for my grandkids? What does this mean for my children?” And so they really are looking for ways to get involved. I think one of the things that we’ve learned with what happened in Louden County in Virginia is that these local elections matter, it’s got to start locally. And you’re seeing people get involved in politics that they were like, “I never thought I’d run for office, but I’m going to run for office now because I want to be a voice and I want to do good in my community.”

And I think that that is inspirational to see Americans really become part of the political process. Because I think a lot of times people don’t want to get into politics because they’re like, “I don’t know it.”

Bill Walton (30:18):

Well, the Democrats have be the party of government, and that’s their business model, that’s what they do. And all the money comes from government-

Matt Schlapp (30:26):

We’re by the government.

Bill Walton (30:26):

We’re not, we don’t want to do it.

Mercy Schlapp (30:31):

But we know we have to participate in the political process because politics is going to impact us from the local level to the national level. So that’s part of where you’re seeing people that never… The one thing Trump did bring in were new voices. My sister’s a perfect example, never been a political person, always been in like media and advertising. And all of a sudden, she has her own group of 400 patriots that she can contact at any time because she loves what the president has done and knows what’s at stake in the country. And those are the type of people, this organic movement of people that are saying, “I’m part of this America cause.” And I think that that’s really inspirational for us. It really is.

Bill Walton (31:12):

Well, we’re right at lines of action. Your last chapter in the book is called summing up and getting serious. And my favorite first subhead is, it is as bad as you think.

Matt Schlapp (31:22):

It is.

Mercy Schlapp (31:23):

Good point Schlapp.

Bill Walton (31:24):

Accept the new reality so you can change it.

Matt Schlapp (31:26):

I think the big problem that conservatives have and conservative leaders have is, we have these lofty notions of the way life should be. And it’s fine to talk about that, it’s good to read books about our history and the way things were. There’s great songs about the way things were, but I just don’t want to spend much time on it. We have to understand what they’ve done, what their tactics were to destroy and take over these institutions, what their aims are. And the biggest problem we have is, when we talk about it in the book, and I keep saying we because Mercy was such a big part of this book, but this whispering and this idea that we have to be quiet and we can’t speak too loudly because we might offend somebody, if a white guy’s talking about race, we have to use hush tones if someone of color walks in, because they’re going to assume that we’re have animus towards them, we have to stop all that.

That has been decades and decades of us not feeling like we have a voice that matters or that it can be canceled. So this cancel things started a very long time ago and that simply has to happen. What Conservatives have to do is stop talking about the past and they start talking about the present. We have to start doing that right now or we’re going to lose the country.

Bill Walton (32:31):

There’s all this rhetoric that Conservatives have used in the past, restore, recreate-

Mercy Schlapp (32:36):

Renew.

Bill Walton (32:38):

Everyone starts re, re, re and it’s all looking backwards. We’ve got to look forward. Even our constitution, which we love most people don’t know about. So we even need to talk about that in a way that talks about what it really does is it recognizes the people are not angels and you need a form of government to keep power from concentrating to a few hands, which is where we are right now with a rough tone. And we’re going to talk about, you don’t like what’s going on, you got to break up the power structure.

Matt Schlapp (33:08):

Well, this is right, every time you see power accumulating-

Bill Walton (33:11):

I sound like a nihilist.

Matt Schlapp (33:13):

Well, that kind of nihilism is good for at least a couple days, but when you see power converging around something and it seems fairly strange, like the social media phenomenon or the masking and the vax mandates, you know that there’s something wrong. We’re American in our souls, we know that there’s something wrong about that that can be used in a tyrannical way, which is exactly what they’ve done in every one of those occasions.

Mercy Schlapp (33:37):

It’s so manipulative and it’s so disturbing, and I was talking to a mom yesterday that called me and said, “Can’t people just see it. Can’t they just see it? They’re trying to control your health decisions. They’re trying to tell you that you got to not only put two shots in your five-year-old, but three shots, because that’s what Fauci is saying. They have these kids in mask.” I can tell you stories of Lucia, her best friend, Alicia is so scared of taking off her mask in school.

Bill Walton (33:37):

And even the CDs

Mercy Schlapp (34:06):

And that’s what they’ve created, fear in these kids. And so it’s interesting because in studying midterm with the girls, one of the girls was taking his history and there’s this whole concept about the Republican motherhood. And it was that the women back in time, this was in the early 1800s, they would be home with the kids to basically teach them about Americanism and the constitution. And we have that responsibility as parents to sit down with our kids and explain-

Bill Walton (34:35):

But we gave it up.

Mercy Schlapp (34:36):

We have given up, we have handed it over to a public school to teach them.

Matt Schlapp (34:39):

We were told we weren’t accredited and certified, and we don’t know as much as these smart people. We should back off and let them do it. That was the biggest mistake we made.

Mercy Schlapp (34:46):

It was the biggest mistake is giving up the schools and not being part of that process.

Bill Walton (34:50):

Well, and you’re phrase, it is as bad as you think, when you get to the schools, it’s not just the teachers unions, the school boards, it’s the textbook publishers, it’s the consultants, it’s all these forces that are out there that are just fine with things the way they are. And so we got a lot of demons to slide, to take back education.

Mercy Schlapp (35:13):

But it starts in the home. I really believe that part of this is the battle of… This is where we feel very strongly teaching the kids about our faith, getting them to church, praying together as a family. Now, Matt tells us, and you’ve seen this Bill and Sarah, we don’t watch TV, we sit and read. We literally as a family, sit and read and talk and pray and we have fun. The kids are playing the guitar, and we got to bring that back to the family. It is like shutting out a little bit the outside world that’s trying to just pound these kids with these really negative messaging about themselves and about racism and all this stuff and really talk through what is history of our country.

Yes, there are dark periods of time in our history, but we also have to acknowledge that as an imperfect country as we are, we’ve made a lot of progress and we got to find a way that we all love each other and work together and know what the cause is going back to the American culture.

Matt Schlapp (36:16):

In the opening letter in the book, I talk about our bishop, our priest, our pastor, and our pastor said something, which I thought was great. He said, “We’ve become a society that tolerates everything and forgives nothing,” which I think is really profound when you think about it. Everything’s fine, it’s fine to do everything, but if any of us does anything wrong-

Bill Walton (36:36):

We tolerate everything and we forgive nothing.

Matt Schlapp (36:37):

We forgive nothing. If any of us who say we’re Conservative or Christian or whatever, do anything wrong, which by the way we do for things that are wrong all day long, which is what our human condition is, we then have put ourselves in the penalty box. So my co-author and I were having this conversation about why was Donald Trump so toxic for living his big played boy Manhattan lifestyle? That was so glorified. My whole childhood, those were the coolest cats in the room. Then all of a sudden he decided to be in politics and now all the moralizer came out and said, “What a horrible guy, what a terrible guy. He’s a selfish guy. He’s a rich guy.”

And we thought about this as we were writing the book, we were like, “That’s the way it works for who wants to be a Republican or a Conservative, or excuse me, someone who loves America, is you step, you have one foot fault, we will end you.” And what we have to start doing is when they end us, we just simply have to not be ended. And so why did I write that book? Because they ended me. I was done and I thought, “Okay, I could do what everyone does, take a month off, don’t say a word.”

Bill Walton (37:39):

I’ve known you for a while, you’re not done.

Matt Schlapp (37:41):

I’m not done. And I thought, “Well, let’s double down on this thing.” You say I’m a bad guy and I’ve committed a foot fault and I’m immoral for all these reasons, guess what, I get to write my version of events. And guess what, I think I win in the end on this.

Bill Walton (37:54):

I encourage everybody to read this. Summing up and getting serious, you’ve got one title here, reciprocity, Republicans and Conservatives cannot be the only victims.

Matt Schlapp (38:05):

That’s right. And Trump taught us this as well, which is so we get into office versus you work for President Trump, you are on the transition, we get into office and what happens? Within a nanosecond, there will be a special counsel and an ethics investigation. It’s happened to every national Republicans, Spiro Agnew, it’s in their book of tricks. So you know it’s coming your way, and what do we do in the face of investigation? We start to cower, we hire lawyers, we say, “No comment,” when they say the worst things about us, it’s what all Republicans do. And they get into office and they actually commit outrageous unconstitutional infractions.

Certainly every president that’s been around since I’ve been alive, maybe not Jimmy Carter, and what do we do in that face? We say, “Well, well, wait, wait, we should be fair about this. The authorities should look at it,” but we don’t press too hard in, because there’s an unwritten rule in Washington for Republicans, it’s a democratic town or Republicans better tread carefully when it comes to these questions of ethics. And I think another thing that Trump taught us is to say, “Stop doing that. When they come after you for something little, why don’t you go after them twice as hard for what they did that it was big.”

Bill Walton (39:15):

Yeah. The counter punch.

Matt Schlapp (39:17):

That’s right.

Bill Walton (39:18):

This is The Walton Show. We’re talking with Mercy and Matt Schlapp about, what are we talking about here? About taking back our country if we can. This report that came out that showed there really was spying on the Trump campaign, really was, it really did happen. They really did penetrate the servers of the White House, they really did do all that. Do you think this is going to have any effect?

Matt Schlapp (39:41):

Well, I sent a tweet out this morning thanking Hillary Clinton and the Biden team for selling out all the premium tickets at CPAC, because there is great enthusiasm for this idea that everything they accused us of being, they are. They accused us of breaking all these rules, and for Trump to being this extraordinary law breaker while he was president, but what you really see here is proof through the 17 pages or 27 pages of this initial document. By the way, this document is only public because one of the defendants wants to change their counsel. And that is why we had this first public description of what Durham has.

This is not even a first step, this is a tiny little baby step. Yeah. He’s got a lot more to come out behind it. And he’s been methodical, I think, almost too methodical. So what the Left wing is now-

Bill Walton (40:32):

Did he have a lot of this before the election, do you believe?

Matt Schlapp (40:34):

My guess is yes. And that’s how we play the game, let’s face it. We don’t do things like withhold a vaccine before an election because it might help the other side.

Mercy Schlapp (40:44):

And that was the talk.

Matt Schlapp (40:46):

We don’t do things like that. They do.

Mercy Schlapp (40:46):

Exactly. And that’s the talk of the pharmaceutical company holding the vaccine and we have very good source on this, holding the vaccine before the election coming out. It is all politically calculated, it was all about getting rid of Donald Trump. And I think when it comes to this story on Hillary spying on the Trump campaign and the White House, what I’m concerned about is the media mainstream liberal media’s role in not covering this. We saw them botch the Hunter Biden story so badly. And now I think this is going to be part two, where they will focus on everything else, try to continue to hit Donald Trump because that’s the person they’re always focused on and not cover this in an objective way.

And so that’s why it’s so important for us to continue to talk about this report, talk about how corrupt this Clinton campaign was, and really digging down on who knew what in terms of spying.

Matt Schlapp (41:49):

It doesn’t stop with the Clinton campaign. So the ball is carried by the Clinton campaign-

Mercy Schlapp (41:53):

Handed over to the FBI and the CIA.

Matt Schlapp (41:56):

And these government contractors. So this went well into the Trump administration. Obviously, it turned into the Paris Accord.

Bill Walton (42:02):

But it looks like the Obama White House was helping him on this.

Matt Schlapp (42:06):

That’s right. Sure does.

Bill Walton (42:07):

And all that information inside the White House servers was all part of this.

Matt Schlapp (42:11):

And who was Barack Obama’s vice president?

Bill Walton (42:14):

Goodness.

Matt Schlapp (42:15):

So you start to unpeel this onion and you realize that there’s quite a cabal that was very well aware of the steps they were taken. And I think the Republican Party’s been very sheepish in making these charges. I was on Twitter yesterday, I called for Jake Sullivan to immediately resign. Here’s a person who was one of the top advisors to the Hillary Clinton campaign, came out publicly and said that Trump was aligned, was colluding with Russia through this bank, and now he’s sitting over there at the White House?

Mercy Schlapp (42:49):

As a national a security advisor.

Matt Schlapp (42:49):

How does that happen? How is there not just a cacophony of voices to say, he must step down now.

Bill Walton (42:54):

We’ve got a couple minutes left, the elephant in the room, Donald Trump. What happens next?

Matt Schlapp (42:59):

Are you going to go or do you want me to go?

Mercy Schlapp (43:01):

No, you can go because we have a little bit of a different, I don’t know. You go first.

Matt Schlapp (43:06):

Yeah. Well, you mean in terms of running for President, Bill?

Bill Walton (43:08):

Yeah. It’s question on everybody’s mind.

Matt Schlapp (43:11):

First of all, I told you that CPAC is selling out, thanks to all these dark forces and the American people saying, “Wait, maybe it is as bad as I think it is.” And Donald Trump’s going to be there. It might be the first time that he really addresses some of these allegations. And I think he’s very fired up to know that his administration could have been spied on for all four years and the campaign before it and the reelection pain. And I think it makes him more prone to want to get back in and make a difference. I think there are two things he cares about, the first one is how well do we do in the midterms? Is it is okay. Or is it a spectacular smashing win? And number two, how does he feel physically, mentally about doing the job?

He watches Joe Biden do this job and he feels like Joe Biden has no self-respect. No self-respecting person would put themselves in a position where they can look so enfeebled. And by the way, make us all so dangerous. What China and Russia is doing, it’s very dangerous for this country.

Bill Walton (44:13):

Well, my view is he could get us incinerated.

Matt Schlapp (44:15):

Yes.

Bill Walton (44:16):

playing around, he’s playing with fire and these people in his administration don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

Matt Schlapp (44:22):

Or maybe they do, and that’s even worse.

Mercy Schlapp (44:24):

Yeah. And they know these foreign powers know that they’re facing a very weak president and they know they can take advantage. We are not equipped to handle what’s coming our way. They could say what they said about Trump and Macron and all this fancy elitist could be like, “Oh, I, we didn’t like Donald Trump. He would talk to us rudely or whatever,” but they were scared of him. They knew that he could face the Chinese president and be like, “This is what we’re doing.” And you know that President G. would in his own way, say, “I’m not going to mess with President Trump.” And that’s exactly what would happen.

Bill Walton (45:03):

And Trump said that about G. I think they all felt like, don’t mess with each other.

Mercy Schlapp (45:09):

Don’t mess with each other.

Bill Walton (45:10):

I had Peter Pry and Mike Waller on last week and we talked about national defense, and Peter said something extraordinary said that, Russia if it wanted to, could take Ukraine in 72 hours, all of the NATO countries, 72 hours, and the Pentagon is done like 18 war games about what would happen if we tried to defend Taiwan and we lost all 18.

Mercy Schlapp (45:33):

Yes, we will. We’ll lose it.

Bill Walton (45:35):

So we’ve got a rough three years ahead of us or two years and eight months.

Matt Schlapp (45:41):

I also thought the other thing that happened on your show, which I retweeted, which I thought was wonderful was this whole idea of, we had the next Tiananmen Square, which basically what Hong Kong was. But if we had the next Tiananmen Square, all the elites in America wouldn’t be with the guy standing before the tank, they’d be with the tank driver.

Bill Walton (45:57):

Yeah. Look what they did in Canada. That’s where they are, and they’re totalitarian.

Mercy Schlapp (46:02):

Well, there was a Babylon B, which they’re just so creative and they had Trudeau watching the Tiananmen Square.

Matt Schlapp (46:11):

There you go.

Mercy Schlapp (46:11):

And it was like, he’s waiting for what’s going to happen here. But if you look at Trudeau who will refuse to sit down with these truckers, refuse. He spends this time calling these people, hateful, racist, all these horrible things. He refuses to sit down with them. He’s not a leader. You have to listen to your people. And there is a case of someone who I just think has been a huge disappointment.

Bill Walton (46:37):

Well, he started out as a disappointment, but he’s gotten worse.

Mercy Schlapp (46:40):

He did, it’s gotten worse.

Bill Walton (46:41):

So I’ve got to ask you about Trump, and then we got to get out of here to be continued. Yes. What do you think is going to happen?

Mercy Schlapp (46:47):

I think it’s more 50/50. I think Matt puts a higher percentage on Trump running. I think for him it’s about, can he win? And I think that it’s all going to be, can he regain the trust that for example, the suburban women who I think really have struggled during… In that 2020 campaign, we lost a lot of the support of the suburban women and independent voters. So can he regain their trust? Can he bring them over to their side?

Bill Walton (47:12):

Can he somehow take the school will issue, the CRT, the mass, the lockdowns in the schools and make it his issue? Because if he could do one thing with suburban women that would dear him to them is to take that up as an issue and mean it.

Mercy Schlapp (47:27):

Well, the thing is, I think they have to get to the point where they’re like, “Okay, fine. He’s going to tweet out what he’s going to tweet out, but at least under him, we were safer. At least under Trump, we were more prosperous as a nation. At least under Trump, there was more stability in this country.” I think that you’ve seen these women really with Biden, they’ve stayed quiet, they’re not saying anything. They know that Biden is a failure and they know that the Democrats are pushing now or pushing this agenda that’s infuriating them.

Bill Walton (47:58):

Well, can you guys talk with him, and obviously we can’t get into inside baseball too much, but I think he needs to hear that he’s got to stop talking about 2020. Him talking about that election and it was stolen and we believe it was stolen, but so what? Nobody really cares about that anymore, they care about what he’s going to do for them now.

Matt Schlapp (48:17):

My advice to him always is-

Bill Walton (48:19):

And I’m afraid with this report that really was spying and he is going to spend his speeches, 50 minutes on I was spied on and not so much on what he’s going to do now.

Mercy Schlapp (48:29):

But this is infuriating.

Matt Schlapp (48:30):

Yeah. But on the spying, I think it takes the focus off the election and we get down to the brass tacks of what’s going on in this Biden administration and what happened with Barack Obama as well. Prosecuting the case against these tyrants, these socialists who are really destroying all these American norms, I think is a more constructive conversation. On the election I think what I fear is that if we don’t talk about it, we enable them to get away with it again, because they’ll do it again.

Bill Walton (48:59):

I’m just saying proportionally.

Mercy Schlapp (49:02):

You’re saying maybe the president not focused about it.

Matt Schlapp (49:02):

It’s stringboard.

Bill Walton (49:03):

Get him the surrogates to do it.

Matt Schlapp (49:06):

Speak about it as a springboard to what you would do differently. So I think he has to talk about it, but he can’t just neurotically focus on it because I think we all want to know what we’re going to do to change things.

Bill Walton (49:20):

This has been fun, more to come.

Matt Schlapp (49:23):

Did that last like five minutes? How long?

Bill Walton (49:27):

So this is The Desecrators, a book everybody ought to have and read, written by Matt Schlapp and Deal Hudson. I suspect one of the third silent co-author is also sitting at the table.

Matt Schlapp (49:39):

She wrote the introduction.

Mercy Schlapp (49:40):

I did write the introduction.

Bill Walton (49:41):

Which was really good.

Matt Schlapp (49:42):

She was my editor. When I had COVID, she was editing it while I was lying on the couch.

Mercy Schlapp (49:46):

I don’t even know how I did not get COVID at that time because I was literally sitting next to him going, “Oh God, please don’t let me get COVID.”

Sarah (49:52):

But you didn’t.

Mercy Schlapp (49:53):

He didn’t, he got it.

Bill Walton (49:55):

Sarah’s off in this camera. She’s got a lot to add to this.

Mercy Schlapp (49:58):

She was too quiet.

Bill Walton (50:00):

Anyway, Mercy Schlapp, Matt Schlapp, thanks. We’ll be talking soon. I’ll see you next week in Orlando. Anyway, thanks for joining us on The Bill Walton Show, and we can be found on CPAC now is streaming on Monday nights. And we’re now on For America platform as well and all the major podcast platforms, including YouTube most of the time, unless they choose to censor us. I think we got through this one. We’ll see. Anyway, thanks for joining.

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